The old "illusion of damsels" dungeon ruse

[S'mon]

There are two famous old examples:

(spoilers, I can't find how to do spoiler tags...)







1. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess - Illusion of the Decapus - the (pretty mild) picture of the illusionary damsel being tortured got the module recalled!

2. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits - Buxom caged damsels, actually shapechanged evil lycanthropes.

It was so common it was a cliche, and having an actual rescuable damsel almost counted as a trope inversion!

I have tended not to use damsels-in-distress (rescuable or trap) in my tabletop games much recently, it can make some players uncomfortable - same with child NPCs. If I'm running a Conanesque online game (chat or pbem) there will be plenty of damsels, though; eg I recently used a captive queen who needed rescuing from a dragon in two separate games, and a damsel being chased by a giant ape in a third!

I find there's a problem with D&D in that players tend to treat '0th level' type NPCs as cardboard cut-outs, so if a damsel NPC is going to stick around for any time at all I'll usually give her a class and levels. Eg a low-level Cleric who can heal the party as a reward for rescuing her (the Queens, above), the damsel chased by the ape was 'Stranger' class -
GROGNARDIA: Grognard's Grimoire: Stranger
A bland, uninteresting damsel is a waste of a good NPC opportunity.

 

[Crothian]

I wonder how many times PCs have come across real damsels in distresss and slaughtered them out right?

 

[Doug McCrae]

If D&D teaches us anything, it's that women are not to be trusted.

This really is the oldest one in the book. It was used in probably the first ever session of D&D, run by Dave Arneson. One of the PCs acquired a magic sword and became a hero as a result (effectively level 4). When the party camped for the night, the hero was approached by a beautiful woman. When they kissed, she turned into a giant snake and crushed him to death.

*high fives your DM*

When this trick works I don't think all the credit is due the DM, the players probably deserve more of the plaudits for good roleplaying. One reason it's hard to get it to work is that, in the context of D&D, sex doesn't matter. Treasure, magic items and xp are valuable. They give you better numbers on your character sheet. Women don't give you any pluses, so they're worthless.

 

[Vurt]

Not actually a trick, but the first adventure in Shackled City featured some kidnapped children, which nobody suspected of being anything else.

So if you really want your 'damsel trick' to work, consider using children instead, maybe after you have the adventurers hired to go rescue them.

 

[subrosas]

Not a module, but yeah...

I was running a 3.5 campaign with three males and one female player (my wife). They were deep in a section of dungeon overrun by trolls, far from any exit. The trolls were in fact trapped in their section, and starving to death.

The party carved a path through the sickly trolls straight to the chamber of their mysterious leader, who was secretly an annis. Upon bursting into the chamber they found an enormous cloud giant princess with hair dyed an electric pink.

"I am Princess Aurora of the Pink Fluffy Cloud tribe," I had her announce (I did it in falsetto). "You will be greatly rewarded by my father, king Sunshine of the Pink Fluffy Cloud tribe for your kindness in rescuing me."

Looking up from my notes, I saw all three males at the table were sitting with mouths agape in stunned silence. My wife, however, kind of shrugged and had her character move closer to the cloud giant in order to offer her a piece of beef jerky (it was sort of an in-joke in the campaign - unfortunate npcs such as beggars were usually offered beef jerky in lieu of coin).

At that moment the annis returned to her true form, announced "LOL, I tricksed you!" and rolled two crits and got a rend on my wife's wizard. All the male players sort gave a massive exhalation, looking strangely relieved. My wife, on the other hand, was the one now looking at me as if she didn't really know me.

I slept on the couch that night, of course

 

[MutieMoe]

I don't think my player's have ever fallen for the damsel in distress ruse.

It's just over-used, any DM or designer using it these days should be thown to some cold dank underground place possibly in drag.